Guest Post: Putin's Kampf

Russia’s seizure of Crimea is the most naked example of peacetime aggression that Europe has witnessed since Nazi Germany invaded the Sudetenland in 1938. It may be fashionable to belittle the “lessons of Munich,” when Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier appeased Hitler, deferring to his claims on Czechoslovakia. But if the West acquiesces to Crimea’s annexation – the second time Russian President Vladimir Putin has stolen territory from a sovereign state, following Russia’s seizure of Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions in 2008 – today’s democratic leaders will surely regret their inaction.

In Western capitals, the response so far has been mixed. The punishments being considered – expulsion from the G-8, for example – would be laughable were the threat to Europe’s peace not so grave. Putin regards the breakup of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of modern times, and he has sought relentlessly to refashion Russia’s lost empire. If the West intends to be taken seriously, it needs to act as decisively as Putin has.

Putin’s many successes in his imperial project have come virtually without cost. His Eurasian Economic Community has corralled energy-rich states like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan into Russia’s camp. Georgia was dismembered in 2008. Armenia’s government was bullied into spurning the European Union’s offer of an Association Agreement.

Now the greatest geostrategic prize of all – Ukraine – may fall into Putin’s hands. Russia without Ukraine, former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, “ceases to be an empire, but Russia with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.” And, because the vast majority of Ukrainians have no desire to join Putin’s empire, we can be certain that the state Putin will lead from this point on will be a highly militarized one, rather like the Soviet Union but without the ruling Communist Party.

Given the scale of Putin’s adventurism, the world’s response must be commensurate. Canceled summits, trade deals, or membership in diplomatic talking shops like the G-8 are not enough. Only actions that impose tangible economic sanctions that affect Russian citizens – who, after all, have voted Putin into power time and again – offer any hope of steering the Kremlin away from its expansionist course.

Which sanctions might work?

First, Turkey should close the Dardanelles to Russian shipping, as it did after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Back then, Turkey closed access to the Black Sea to prevent the US from intervening, though the US, it is now clear, had no intention of doing so. Today, it should close the Turkish straits not only to Russian warships, but to all commercial vessels bound for Russia’s Black Sea ports. The impact on Russia’s economy – and on Putin’s military pretensions – would be considerable.

Turkey is permitted to close the Dardanelles under a 1982 amendment to the 1936 Montreux Convention. Indeed, Turkey could turn Putin’s justification for seizing Crimea – that he is protecting ethnic Russians there – against him, by arguing that it is protecting its Turkic Tatar kin, who, given Russia’s ill treatment of them in the past, are anxious to remain under Ukrainian rule.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu turned his plane around in mid-air this week to fly to Kyiv to offer support to the new interim government. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, no pushover himself, as Putin well knows, should follow up on that gesture of support by immediately closing the straits to Russian shipping – until Putin recalls all troops in Crimea to their Sevastopol bases or to Russia proper. And Turkey should be offered an Article 5 guarantee from NATO should Russia seek to intimidate it.

Second, US President Barack Obama should impose the type of financial sanctions on Russia that he has imposed on Iran for its nuclear program. Those sanctions have crippled Iran’s economy. Similarly, denying any bank that does business with a Russian bank or company access to the US financial system would create the kind of economic chaos last seen in Russia immediately after the fall of Communism. Ordinary Russians should be made to understand that permitting Putin – whose primary claim to leadership is that he ended the penury of the first post-Soviet years – to continue with his imperialist aggression will cost them dearly.

Third, Obama should emphasize to the Chinese their stake in Eurasian stability. Putin may regard the Soviet Union’s disintegration as a tragedy, but for China it was the greatest geostrategic gift imaginable. At a stroke, the empire that stole millions of hectares of Chinese territory over the centuries, and that threatened the People’s Republic with nuclear annihilation, simply vanished.

Since then, Central Asia’s independent states, and even Ukraine, have become important trading partners for China. Russia’s conquests in Georgia greatly displeased China, as was seen at the post-war summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (a regional grouping that includes ex-Soviet countries that share borders with China and Russia). Russia pushed the SCO to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But the SCO balked. The group’s Central Asian members – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – would not have stood up to the Kremlin without China’s support.

Today, however, Chinese President Xi Jinping may need to be less cryptic in his response to Putin’s adventurism. Indeed, the real test of China’s claim that it is a responsible stakeholder in the world community will come soon at the United Nations. Will it back Putin’s clear flouting of international law, or will it back Ukraine’s territorial integrity?

There are other possible punitive measures. Visas can be denied and canceled for all Russian officials. Assets can be frozen, particularly those laundered by oligarchs close to Putin. Only when the pain becomes intolerable, particularly for the elite, will Putin’s kampf be defeated.

The cost of inaction is high. Countless countries, from Japan to Israel, rely on America’s commitment to act robustly against grave breaches of the peace. Moreover, when Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons in 1994, it did so with the express understanding that the US (and the United Kingdom, France, and Russia) would guarantee its territorial integrity. Should Crimea be annexed, no one should gainsay Ukraine if it rapidly re-nuclearized its defense (which it retains the technological capacity to do).

When Chamberlain returned from Munich, Winston Churchill said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Obama and other Western leaders face a similar choice. And if they choose dishonor, one can be certain that an undeterred Putin will eventually give them more war.

The United States must make every effort to liberate ethnic Russian Crimea from the Russians. A draft may be necessary. Now is not the time to value our humble human lives above the needs of Western elite.

It's time that American Fathers AND Mothers sharpen their blades and cut the Neocon Military-Industrial-Surveillance-Data Complex down like the overgrown thicket, threatening to suffocate their children, that it is.

I'm getting really tired of the political-media Zionist apparatchick TELLING me 'what to think' about events that they create and foster.

The 'Eastern powers', the 'Western powers', and the M.I.C., with their lap-dogs in the media, continue to forment the false paradigm of 'us versus them', while babies die, men are killed, women are raped, and everyone is getting GMO'd or RADIATED.

I've always been of the opinion that what's right is right, and what's wrong is shit.

The Second Amendment was put in place to guarantee that the other Amendments were able to be Upheld (along with the Constitution itself), as long as there were people willing to take a stand; patriots in my nation that recognized that 'lines in the sand' were going to get washed away by the red tides, and able enough to see what is coming to our shores.

The whole FUCKING WORLD is being eradicated, at the behest of a few 'elites'.

FEMA has millions of Body-Bags, and DHS has billions of rounds of AMMO.

Putin just has to wait, and if PUTIN were really fucking smart he would spend just 1/10 of what LURCH/HILLARY spent on the fire in the UKRAINE, ... spend $500k wisely and you could ignite civil war 2.0 in the USA.

Remember the 19 saudi boys who did 911, had a budget of less than $10k USD, and caused ten's of trillions of damage to the USA economy.

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The USA has started Moron-Spring with Facebook/Twitter worldwide, ... all the USA does is feed/fuel the right MORONS in the USA, and just watch the FEMA put those body-bags to good use.

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Then you got the chinese-taleban killing old people in CHINA, innocents being slaughtered, what if CHINA paid METH-HEADS in the USA "nickel-bags" to run through the mall's with HIV infected methead-blood, ...

I can't believe the USA or anybody is this stupid, this shit is going to come home to roost in the USA,and the funny think DHS is already armed, and FEMA is ready for the corpses

i am kind of hoping that "President Barack Obama should impose the type of financial sanctions on Russia that he has imposed on Iran for its nuclear program." so russia can't sell its oil and gas for dollars. hmmm? what might it sell them for? oh, yes.....gold. i notice the u.s. backed down on its iran sanctions when it appeared the same thing was happening. hope they try it again. it will unmask the paper gold sham rather quickly: http://stateofglobe.com/2012/02/16/the-gold-market-de-and-re-constructed...

Tyler is making an important point by posting this outrageous piece. There are many establishment media and NGO hacks that are lobbying and advocating outright war against Russia.

However it is well understood in the intelligence community and amoung military strategists that if a confrontation between nuclear powers with ICBMs must escalate into all out war, it is very much in the interest of the weaker power to launch a massive first strike so as to weaken the stronger opponent's offense, eliminate most of its military capacity and reduce it to a third rate power.

The U.S. political leadership and financial and media elites have no idea of the massive risks they are taking.

If Russia strikes first the American empire is history and little Isreal is left "swimming naked" in a very hostile world, assuming it is not also nuked into a glass ball like much of the U.S. in the first launch.

This kind of article is necessary to let the ZH readers realize just how criminally insane and dangerous these elites really are.

but seriously don't get yourself all twisted up about this. NOthing to see here. "Russia" is the sock puppet. By 2020 it will have crumbled again, to an even more unrecognizable state of a pack of wild regional dogs. Nothing to worry about here. They just don't have the juice. And Putin is greedier than he is power hungry. He is no visionary. There is no Putin's Kampf. Or even something wild we can attribute, like Marxism....he's just a greedy fuck. Ain't no Stalin, that's for sure. Economic sanctions will likely do the trick, but it will never get that far, as Europe will likely let him have Crimea... Without the real economic power and a top 5 military, and at least a foothold in the Baltics and/or Georgia, the FSR is not a player. Period.

There's been a coup at Zerohedge and it's under NSA control Two psychopathic neocon court jesters today: Anatole Kaletsky and Charles Tannock?

I've said it before, America has gone to hell because its population has gone to hell. The people are no longer good, hard-working individualists, but a hodge-podge of control freaks, moochers, and useless idiots.

As a country, it is beginning to show the worst characteristics of the worst countries in recent history and giving no indication of being able to reverse the trend.

It is Detroit writ large and like for some friends from there, time to leave.

I haven't been here from anywhere near the beginng, and I don't know what ZH was like at the beginning. With that being out there, I have to write that I love seeing articles like this on ZH. The article itself is complete bullshit, the author can go buy himself a nice rifle, ammo, and a plane ticket to the Ukraine if he likes but otherwise he can fuck off. What gives me joy is reading the comments because this is one of the few threads I've seen where the article will be treated with the complete contempt it deserves by the vast majority of posters.

Kudos for thinking for yourself. I can scarce believe I just congratulated you for being sentient...sigh.

The site used to be a place where a bunch of capital markets geeks hung out to catch headlines and swap predictions and trades. then it turned into the gold bug site and then the doomer site, and was great for the elections, but once we got to bitcoin, I have been forced to curtail my time here.... maybe we should start another based on the original premise?

The rhetoric is ridiculous. This writer's tone is so "old warry" and "cold warry"....

Be interesting to contrast what people were saying when the wall fell and the ruski collective collapsed in 1991, with the bloviating now. That was th eoriginal coup. Years of softening with poor to pathetic leadership, then gorby delivering the scythe's sweeping blow.

Just another psychopathic chicken hawk spewing his tough guy venom, but it won't be him or any of his kids that will be there fighting if it ever came to that... he'd be hiding in his bunker with the rest of the chicken hawks. F*£k I hate arseholes like this guy!

A non-profit organization, Project Syndicate relies primarily on contributions from newspapers in developed countries, which make up roughly 60% of its membership base, to enable it to offer its services at reduced rates, or for free, to newspapers in countries where journalistic resources may not be readily available. Project Syndicate has also received grants from the Open Society Foundation, The Politiken Foundation in Denmark, Die Zeit Ebelin, and Gerd Bucerius Foundation.

And who's the big daddy of the Open Society Foundation ? Case closed...

Should read- The Open Society Foundation is a slush fund to disperse propaganda, foment disturbances resulting in the overthrow of Democraticaly elected governments, undermine the rule of law, insert propaganda into students curriculim, soft kill populations via the public health system, and subvert independent media. While working for a one world order.

I love to dump on American hypocrisy as much as the next guy, but did those confict you list become annexed territories of a Greater United States? If not, kind of a fail for an analogy. Those examples work wonderfully to refute John Kerry's Sunday talkshow laments though.

Oh, and the writer is full of shiite. Sudetenland was handed to Chancellor Hitler at the Munich Conference; he invaded the remaining rump of Czechoslovakia afterwards. Putin may be a MacKinder Heartland afficionado, but he isn't a Hitler.

I was out shopping, did I miss the annexation announcement? Dang! Why anyone would annex when the traditional 'puppet state' option is on the table is beyond me. The favored choice of the American empire.

yes, it is. And what of it? You'd rather play nice in the sandbox, cuz everyone else is promising to? It's Obama Kumbaya dreams...".just wait til after the election and I'll have a lot more flexibillity... are you sure you don't wan a blowjob?"

Think natural selection of ideology. Economic Lobbying. If they don' play tht way, we'll send in the drones... I'd much prefer the former.

Mixed.... Putin is more capable of intelligent and measured planning, including contingencies. But he doesn't have the wild and incredible dreams of total control at Hitler's level, nor does he have the truly megalomaniacal belief in himself and his cause that Hitler had, and which makes madmen like him spectactularly dangerous. Finally, Hitler had a relatively young and healthy population base to work with in the 1930's, needing resources and land for them - while Putin has unlimited land, abundant resources, and a seriously sick and fatigued population. Putin is more of an ambitious dictator compared to Hitler's insane zealousness.

Want to hear a laugh? That hand gesture by Churchill is not a peace sign. I know because my relatives are in England. It means the same as our single middle finger. Notice the fingers are facing the opposite direction of a regular peace sign.

The Crimea has been Russian for roughly 250 years. It was transferred in the mid 1950s to Ukraine by the Marxists, because Ukrainians fought Bolshevism and Allliied with the Germans in their fight against Bolshevism and therefore they were mistrusted by Stalin and the Communist criminals, after Stalin had finished the Communist ethnic cleansing of Tartars, Greeks, Bulgarians and Germans on the Krim, who also didn't recognize the Communists as liberators and supported the evil Nazis who allegedly came to enslave them. Therefore they transferred Crimea to Ukraine to get it better under control (there was resistance agains Roosevelt's and Churchill's great liberating Ally even up into the 1950s despite liberator Stalin's terror).

So if Putin makes sure the Crimea and the Russians there stay under Russian protection it is the same very just and correct politics that also Germany did to protect the Germans in Sudetenland.

Ofcourse the Globalists then and now do not respect the right of self-determination of the people. Especially the Brits were masters in drawing artificial, anti-ethnic and historically unfounded borders to create future conflicts. Just look what they did between India and Pakistan or in Africa.

And when the ethnic conflicts finally break out, principle PROBLEM - REACTION - SOLUTION comes to fruitition. The problem created by the criminals is then used to offer their "solution".

Putin's adviser on economics Sergei Glazyev said:- Russia will abandon the dollar.- And also Russia will create its currency system , together with China and other countries.- And also Russia will abandon all public U.S. Treasuries.- And also Russia will refuse to return any U.S. loans.- And also Russia will arrest all assets of the United States and the West.- And also Russian will stop all Russian oil and gas supplies to Europe. Oil and gas from Russia will go to China.- And also Russia already has banned the import of meat from the United States.Goodbye dollar, hello gold. Goodbye to the United States and the West, hello China and East.

WELL, in answer to your question, it wasn't Orville or Wilbur WRIGHT, that's for sure.

Think of Villhelm Krystol, over at 'The Weekly Standard', after an all-night bender with the boys over at AIPAC, and consultation with certain 'southern' senators and congressmen who seem to think that 'Merikuh' is beholden to (name the nation or region or city here), and that WE (the United States, Incorporated) ARE the 'New Jerusalem'.

Take a lesson from history, as you wonder WHO WRITES this shit.

The REAL questions, of course, are WHY was this SHIT WRITTEN in the first place? WHO benefits from this, and WHAT are the motives behind it? WHEN was it written, and HOW was this allowed to be (or promoted to be) PUBLISHED, and by WHOM (or WHAT ENTITY) did it originate? WHERE was the location of the author when it was written?

WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, HOW? The classic questions for those who wish to critique a 'journalistic story', as taught by a journalism teacher of mine, way back. The 5 W's (and the H). Straight A's in the course, but it was not my calling, so I went in another direction...

You failed to mention the Mormons,.. some +60% of CIA recruits are MORMON, as a young kid of 20 on bicycle in a foreign country, are the only USA citizens in the FSA that have the cognitive ability to learn foreign language a CIA perquisite for being a shitty little spy.

Most telling is that the new NSA center is in UTAH, so everyone can work near family and friends that belongs to the 'tribe'.

Most of you seemed to have all missed that one. No dumbasses, some Russians are calling Putin the new Hitler. Tards. Give me a fucking break. Do I have to explain everything over and over again? No wonder so many veteran ZH'ers absconded from this site.

ZH was the "last bastion of truth" as you see truth. That doesn't necessarily mean the absolute truth. What has you miffed is that ZH now entertains views that might conflict with this truth thing as you see it. That change could be editorial and reflect the prevailing mindset of those now running the site, or it could be economically driven, which means those subscribing to "Truth" as you see it were not a sufficiently large or attractive demographic to pay the bills on a site offered FREE to members and readers.

Since you seem to believe you are part of the group having a monopoly on "truth", you are more than welcome, I suppose, to form your own "last bastion" in the form of your own blog.

Which team? My team. Just one person on it. Specious comments? Which ones? If my comment is "full", then this should be easy for you.

You are convinced you have a monopoly on "truth". Many others on this site hold a similar view. As for me, I do not know everything, but some things I do know absolutely. I never join the global warming debate, nor the peak oil debate, because though I might have leanings and opinions, I lack the necessary expertise to consider myself all-knowing. For example, regarding AGW, I read what "flakmeister" writes and follow a good many of his links (I do have an extensive science background, at least), and do the same with those who oppose him. For peak oil I follow CrashisOptimistic (and factor in the absolute and incontrovertible reality of a finite planet), but also entertain the views of those who think we've yet to deplete the majority of easy-access, positive energy return deposits.

What gets me to post on other issues, from time to time, is when I see people aver something I know to be false (through personal experience), and who are every bit a Sheeple as anyone they criticize who follows the MSM. I have come to using the term Streaming Lame Media, (SLM, to contrast with what is called the Lame Stream Media) to refer to the Internet Charlatans who believe "truth" can be created via a series of at least three "LINKS", usually just after they pull some "fact" straight out of their ass. I also see that "confirmation bias" is always for the other guy and not for those who are followers of the SLM. That is dishonest, because confirmation bias affects everyone who lacks first hand knowledge.

It does seem that ZH's editorial policy has changed, but only those unwilling to admit their lack of omniscience are getting outraged and threatening to move on. Just as the comments section has, albeit rarely, contrasting views such as noted above in the form of flakmeister and CiO and those who oppose them, ZH now seems to offer a wider range of voices.

Such "balance" is viewed as heresy or apostasy by many here, who prefer ideological purity and oneness of voice, as well as monopolistic dibs on "truth". I guess my "specious comments" include my mention of the fact that those who are uncomfortable with the lack of ideological purity can always go off and create their own echo chamber and support group elsewhere and relinquish their membership to this FREE site.

(Just for fun, scroll through any ZH article and view the comments. Note the knee-jerk outrage that happens when one or two posters go off-message. Note how contrary opinion equates to "psy-op", "troll", and "shill". Now ask yourself why you, likely a person with little actual knowledge and direct experience in many of the issues and events of which you purport to know the absolute truth, get so upset when someone challenges the ZH zeitgeist or groupthink and voices views contrary to what your SLM and "LINKS" state. Can you not see that such a reaction is prima facie evidence of confirmation bias?. Okay, I guess you can't.)

I'm going to assume that your long winded reponse is genuine indignation and nothing else, and therefore merits a response. This is the internet, after all.

"...as you see truth. That doesn't necessarily mean the absolute truth." As I see truth? Really? You're implying that there are many truths, and that one only needs to find the one that fits for themselves? Sorry, I don't live in that world.

"ZH now entertains views that might conflict with this truth thing..." This is not news to me. I've been following ZH on and off since 2009. I welcome views that conflict with mine because it gives me the opportunity to call them out, or it opens my eyes. What you are doing in lumping me in with others on this site and implying that I reject views that don't conform with mine. That is YOUR assumption.

"...on a site offered FREE to members..." Many sites are offered free to members, i.e., cNN, MSNBC, WAPO, HuffPo...You think I should be satisfied with the watering hole just because it's free? I choose to drink at the well because of its quality, not because it's free.

"...you seem to believe you are part of the group having a monopoly on "truth"..." I said ZH was the last bastion of truth. Where did I say that me and "my group" have a monopoly on truth? Or was that another inference on YOUR part?

I criticized an article that one would normally find on an MSM website for appearing on ZH. You've had a kneejerk reaction to my comment and unfairly aimed your frustrations with others on this site, at me. Although your frustrations with others on ZH may not be entirely unreasonable, in your reply, you've unfortunately used techniques that are used by professionals to disseminate misinformation. I am completely aware of the confirmation biased, the conspiracy theorists and the sheeple that frequent ZH. That does not deter me from seeking and finding the truth on ZH. But at the end of the day, if it smells like crap, I will call it crap. There is no "in between."

Perhaps your sense of smell is not as keen as you'd like to believe. You might want to ask yourself how you came to "know" what you believe you know, or why something "makes sense" to you. I'm willing to bet---the odds are in my favor---that you have a heartfelt belief that you know the absolute truth about many things in which you have a sum total of zero direct knowledge.

No, I did not say there are multiple truths. What I said is that neither you nor this website has a monopoly on truth. ZH, and many of the posters here, state things I happen to know to be wrong (from direct personal experience). Other things, about which I lack conclusive proof, I either steer clear of or else just present an opinion, as we are all free to do. Zerohedge was never a bastion of truth. It has been a bastion of opinion, and often a bastion of opposing points of view. Your use of the term "bastion of truth" simply means your opinions matched those of the site. Opinion, however, doesn't necessarily equate to truth.

I have to laugh when the MSM is endlessly criticized as never getting anything right, and when those who follow the MSM are accused of being ignorant sheeple, but the same critics accept with no or little question what some Internet Charlatan, with zero access and sitting half a world away from events of the day, can state almost instantly "the real story". Why does only the MSM, and not the SLM, demand skepticism on the part of the reader? Those who differ from the ZH comments zeitgeist are called both shills and arrogant, but those who state categorically views that, while wrong, fit the local groupthink, are not only not called arrogant, but are praised for their "awakeness".

"I'm willing to bet---the odds are in my favor---that you have a heartfelt belief that you know the absolute truth about many things in which you have a sum total of zero direct knowledge."

Those are your words and not anyone else's. I see we are going to be splitting hairs here. Again, you are making assumptions, accepting those assumptions as truth, yet you continue to call others sheeple. The odds are not in your favor.

I call the sheeple callers sheeple, because they merely have their own confirmation bias. If an MSM follower is a sheeple, then so is an SLM follower.

I am not accepting assumptions as truth, but rather---as I stated---going with the odds. If I see someone aver something I know to be false, those odds move heavily in my favor. If proving a negative was possible (e.g., there is no Santa Claus), I'd bet and bet large.

In the end, though, if what ZH posts makes you uncomfortable, you are always free to go elsewhere.

I'll just repeat, no doubt to a standing Bronx Cheer, that the average Zher lives in a fantasy world that has not even the slightest association with reality. Since the SLM gives them what they both want and need, no harm done. The eternally impotent remain satisfied and fulfilled.

Aww, shucks, everyone, if we all just vote for Sarah Palin, everything will be fixed. Why can't everyone see that she's America's only hope? You gotta stop believing the all the media narratives because their just libral lie's. We see through every other fraud, but dammit, she must be the real deal or else I wouldn't believe the media narrative about how the media railroaded her because she's the real deal.

I'm guessing this is aimed at me so I challenge you to show me where I claimed she was the second coming of anything or the solution to all our problems. You gripe about the quality of ZH and then throw up a satarical laced strawman. I gave her credit for being different than our typical Ivy league politician and putting her ass on the line to make a difference. Certainly more than most anyone around here has done.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas, by which I mean principally mustard. We will want to gain more ground in Normandy so as not to be cooped up in a small area. We could probably deliver 20 tons to their 1 and for the sake of the 1 they would bring their bomber aircraft into the area against our superiority, thus paying a heavy toll.

Here's the only catch with this article......thats putting a lot of "faith" in O'fumbles-everything-he-touches to make the right moves and say the right things. China is a HUGE wildcard in this entire scenario, don't know that it would be good for O'town to attempt those types of negotiations. China themselves are involved in some random actions lately that I find somewhat alarming.

Judging by the past 14 years of Adminstrations here in the USA (we could go back wayyy farther, but keeping current), I think it's best we sit this one out, we aren't the shining glory of geopolitical genius.

Chinese Taleban aka Uighers just killed 50 and injured 200, and the local cops did nothing to stop them.

Bin-Laden CIA money is all over this operation.

China's reaction will be telling.

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Will the USA create a HORNETS NEST worldwide to protect the USD? Fuck yes ...

Did the USA kill 3,000 of its own citizens on 911? Do you think the USA will hesitate to murder the world to maintain reserve currency? Fuck yes, ... 100 million dead in the last 100 years, ... I say they will KILL billions in the coming century.

It’s only weird to you because you are ignorant about the area.You might need to go back one thousand to fifteen hundred years or so and study the spread of Islam through Central Asia.Remember the Silk Road?Though its heyday came before the invention of Islam, trade, people and ideas continued to move back and forth after Mohammed came and went.Oh, toss in a little study of the Moghuls after Genghis Khan, too.Then take a look at the map, especially of Afghanistan.Note that long, thin arm that sneaks through a host of nations just to abut today’s China.Think of why that might be, and while doing so, assume the majority of the inhabitants on that strip are Moslem, and that their beliefs and aspirations differ little from one another at both ends of that thin strip.To get the full picture, you’ll also have to study, interestingly, geology and meteorology.Think the old chaos theory meme about a butterfly flapping its wings in Canada causing a typhoon in China, or in this case, a volcano in Indonesia and how it caused famine in then-empire building Russia, leading to a halt in its military ambitions.

The Moslem population in Xinjiang has always been a thorn in the side of Han China, and there have long been periods of violent unrest and massacres interspersed with periods of peaceful co-existence.In recent times, where religious identity has to a considerable extent usurped national identity amongst many adherents of Islam, a new unsettled period has come to fore in Xinjiang, especially as the cronyism of modern CP China has allowed Han Chinese to make claims on assets in Moslem areas of Xinjiang, at the expense of the Moslem inhabitants.

Of course the Zerohedge crowd always arrives at the conclusion---no doubt with “LINKS”---that has foreign powers, secretive families or alphabet agencies behind any and every unrest, completely dismissing the possibility that a people itself might have original thoughts, personal ambitions or grievances based on real or imagined events.In the Zerohedge comments world, there are no ethnic, religious or tribal interests; there are only poor souls whose every act is orchestrated by a group of highly advanced and infinitely clever---albeit malicious---uber mensch who find no issue so small and no area so insignificant that it shouldn’t be manipulated for some greater purpose of “The Plan”.One has to wonder to what the ZH crowd attributed tribal, ethnic, religious and national rivalries before the formation of America or the birth of the Evil Triumvirate (Rothschild, Rockefeller & Soros).I guess that’s the Garden of Eden Period, when Paradise existed from one edge of the flat Earth to the other.

Was Google or the CIA around a thousand years ago when other Moslem-on-Han or Han-on-Moslem massacres occured in the same areas? Oh wait, maybe Google or the CIA has developed time travel. Yea, that's the ticket!

The Sudetenland had never been owned by Germany. It was part of Austria-Hungary for hundreds of years.

Really, read some history books, please. Austria-Hungary as a nation state, a joint double monarchy of equal states was created as late as 1867, out of many circumstanbces which arose after the revolutions of 1848. Austria as an Empire was declared in 1804 in reaction to Napelons coronation as Emperor of the French, it existed as a de facto double-Empire for roughly two years and became an independent Empire when the last Holy Roman Emperor laid down the Roman-German Imperial Crown in 1806 after Napoleon had created territorial and structural facts in the Empire (several southern German states more or less declared their independence etc.) which made it impossible for Emperor Franz II. to keep the old Empire together. So, foget this idea of hundreds of years in this regard. But it is true that the Sudetenland was an area with a clear German ethnic majority since at least the 12th century, part of the Bohemian Crown (the Kingdom of Bohemia). Bohemia was an area of settlement for germanic tribes, namely the Marcimanni, since at least the 1st century AD, the slavonic tribes did enter Bohemia later on, after the 6th century AD. And yes, the area later on known as Sudetenland had been owned by Germany, it was part of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation since the 12th century AD, under the formal jusidiction of the Bohemian Crown (that was the official name of the Kingdom of Bohemia), which itself, again, was part of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.

It was the victors of WWI who strictly forbade the merger of the Republic of German-Austria and the Sudetenland into Germany in 1919 in the treaty of Saint-Germain. We all know the results ...

The Crimea now has a russian population majority only since after WWII. Before, the vast majority were the Crimean Tatars. Stalin either deportet them or killed them right away, and what was left of their once large numbers were allowed to return only after 1988, hence their small number today.

Reading here these last days is not really a pleasure. Putin has far less any "right" to invade Crimea than, for example, the Germans would have to invade Alsace and Lorraine again to get back what was theirs for 1600 years until the French took it by force with war and ruse during the reign of Louis XIV. and outright annexed it after the 30-years war, when the Roman-German Empire was weak and defenseless. The French, however, never changed their customs border of Alsace and Lorraine, it remained where the original French-German border was located before the annexations of 1633-1681, atop the vosges mountains - up until 1871.

Nuland admits spending $5bln in Ukraine--I'm sure it had nothing to do with the coup. Nevermind the intercepted phone call where she plots witht he Us Ambassador to till out the org chart in the new "government."

So we have a US sponsored coup against an elected head of state. Is he a crook? Well most are, aren't they? Ukraine has provisions from impeachment or whatever the process is there. But that's not what happened. There was coup and it looks like Nuland et al lost control of the org chart and a bunch of radicals moved in. Big ideas and little know how meet the real world.

Think of those good people at Maidan fighting to change the status quo by the only way they knew. Then another group co-opts their effort. It was a coup but it looks as though an unelected and self appointed group has formed without the consent of the original revolutionaries. And that self appointed group now seeks international assistance to legitimize and solidify their power. Think of America after 1776. The colonists mostly fought on their own. The French assisted for their self interests. Why should the US jump into the fray in the Ukraine when it is not in the US interest. Chuck the crap with Chamberlain and Munich. If the people of the Ukraine want to rise up let's wish them well. Let's not be sold a bill of goods as to why we should join them. They should negotiate with Putin and the rest of us should not be used as a stick.

Who comes up with this dreck? If (A) anyone does (B) anything to (C) anyone else then (D) compare it to Munich. That's the entire neocon playbook. Nevermind the fact that the peace of Versailles was vengeful and impossible, that 3.5 million German-speaking German citizens lived in the Sudetenland in which Germany had historic interest, that Chamberlain returned to England to a hero's welcome, and that Churchill did more than anyone else to bring down the British Empire. Just keep beating that Munich drum as if it works. I don't think anyone's listening this time.